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Dark Fire
Dark Fire is the fifth book in The Last Dragon Chronicles, released in 2009 by Chris d'Lacey. The sequel to The Fire Eternal, it is followed by Fire World. Plot Summary David has recently returned after being missing for five years and is slowly reintegrating to the lives of those at Wayward Crescent. A mysterious mist has formed over the Arctic, drawing the world's attention and the curiosity of scientists as no one can get through it and all the polar bears have disappeared into it. A young Inuit man named Apak is out on the ice and sees a huge creature with large wings and violet eyes. The narrative reveals that this is the ice dragon G'Oreal. David later tells Zanna that a fire star has opened above the arctic and a dragon colony, called a Wearle, is forming there, waiting for the climate to adjust before they gradually reveal themselves to the world. He also says that the Earth is ready to accept a new species other than dragons. Rupert Steiner, a professor friend of Arthur's, has called and described the appearance of Gadzooks at his house. Arthur, Liz, and Lucy go to Steiner's house and he shows them writing Gadzooks had done in an unidentifiable script. Lucy's dragon Gwendolen tells them it is the written form of dragontongue, and translates the message as "Scuffenbury" which is a place in Maine with a white horse carved in the chalk hillside, across from a large mound called Glissington Tor, which legend says is the tomb of a dragon. Professor Steiner remembers that the college archives have photos of similar markings from a cave on Hella glacier near the Tooth of Ragnar, which had been taken decades ago by a scientist who disappeared in the Arctic. (This is later revealed to be Professor Bergstrom who met and commingled with the bear Thoran; his pocket watch is the one David now uses to communicate with the Wearle.) Steiner had been told about the photographs through a letter signed by someone with the initials HB, who Lucy concludes must be their Arctic-obsessed neighbor Henry Bacon. Henry's ancestor had been on the expedition where the photos were taken and the photo of a polar bear in his living room is actually Professor Bergstrom in polar bear form. Steiner begins translating the inscriptions from the photos, which tell about the last twelve dragons on earth, and eventually publishes it in Tam Farrell's magazine. Arthur reveals to Liz that David told him he was actually meant to be their son, if Gwilanna had not forced them apart years ago and disrupted the Fain's plan. Alexa is a Fain being, and she influenced Arthur to find Gawain's claw and write David into existence so she could come to Earth as David's human child. Alexa slowly grows wings throughout the book and when Zanna asks about this, David says Alexa is a messenger, a mixture of illuminated Fain and human, and that she will be the bridge between humans and dragons that keeps the humans from attacking the dragons like when they were wiped out in the past. The Fain did not know when they commingled with humans that they would be so aggressive and competitive with each other and come against the dragons--that is how the Ix were formed. The Fain want to help the dragons recolonize and bring all the Ix back so they can be destroyed. This requires the Ix to be grouped together as an Ix:risor, Comm:Ix, or Cluster like the one that possessed Lucy. The Wearle plans for the Fire Eternal to be opened and the Ix will be transformed. Alexa will be the key to everything. David says a small number of humans will be illuminated like Alexa, but that most will, like the polar bears, enter Ki:mera, the Fain dimension. Once the dragons return and the environment stabilizes, any bears that chose to come back to earth can. Henry Bacon has a stroke and passes away. He leaves large sums of money to the library, his sister Agatha, and Liz, with some to be set aside for Lucy's college. He leaves all of his books and Arctic collection to David, with the request that they remain in the house, which he has left to Zanna along with all his remaining finances, hoping David and Zanna will fall in love again. Agatha reveals that she is a sybil, and transfers healing knowledge to Zanna. David asks Zanna for help finding Gwilanna, who has the piece of obsidian with Gwillan's fire tear which has inverted into dark fire. Zanna decides to go herself and finds Gwilanna doing a ritual on Farlowe island to demand that the Fain illuminate her to a dragon, or else she will give the dark fire to the Ix. However, the ritual goes wrong and Gwilanna disappears, while David comes and manages to get the obsidian. David is supposed to retrieve the dark fire so the Wearle can destroy it. They say an inverted fire tear has never been recovered, but David resits the idea that it is impossible and hopes to save Gwillan. After Gwilanna's failed ritual, several ravens on the island become semi-darklings without anyone noticing. Later, the darkling-ravens attack Zanna, trying to get Gretel to shed her fire tear so they could invert it. Tam Farrel comes to the rescue and scares them away, dissolving some into water. It is revealed that Tam has an image of Kailar the fighting bear in his right hand and Avrel, Teller of Ways, in his left hand. Lucy gets an e-mail from Sophie saying her listening dragon Grace's ears have been moving. David immediately goes to Africa, but the wildlife center is going up in flames. A dragon appears and swallows up the flames, but Sophie has died getting Grace out of the building. A darkling-raven appears trying to steal Grace's fire tear, but Groyne, invisible, sits next to Grace and catches it. David thinks mixing Grace's fire tear and some icefire with the dark fire will neutralize it, and then they can revive Gwillan and Grace. However, opening the obsidian goes wrong and the dark fire enters the pregnant Liz, who is unconscious for several days. David's writing dragon Gadzooks has been working for G'Oreal, going around the world leaving messages in dragontongue about the locations of the last twelve dragons in stasis on Earth. He leaves the messages in front of large public gatherings and causing a media stir along with the Arctic mist and Apak's story. Film crews set up at each location. Lucy's childhood friend Melanie Cartwright calls to talk to Lucy about all the dragon coverage. Later she and her mom Rachel come to visit with their special mood dragon, Glade. Gretel puts them to sleep and David takes Glade to read Liz. She says Liz is calm, but the baby's auma is not where it should be--he has extended it and brought Gwillan out of stasis, drawing on the dark fire in a "playful" and "indecisive" mood according to Glade. Although Liz and Arthur thought he would be a normal boy named Joseph Henry, he is now deciding between being a dragon and a darkling. David sends Tam and Lucy to Scuffenbury so they will be there when the dragon rises. At the inn they encounter a sybil named Ms Gee and her cat, who Gwendolen realizes is a girl named Bella that Ms Gee has turned into a cat. Ms Gee raises the stone cairn that used to be on Glissington Tor, thinking the sun shining through it will wake the chalk horse and then the dragon. This does not work, but the movement of the stones uncovers part of the hillside, and the Scuffenbury horse is actually a unicorn. Unicorns are capable of great healing, but only when working with a red-haired maiden. The dragon under the Tor is a female named Gawaine (mother of Gawain who met Guinevere), who was pregnant and injured and came to the last unicorn Teramelle for help. Her wounds were too great and the unicorn in despair laid down on the hill to die as well, but Gawaine shared her fire tear to put them both in stasis. Steiner's translation says the old Wearle consisted of 11 male dragons and one female dragon. The 11 shed their tears through their unnatural eyes, which have a special duct to retain a small amount of the spark so they can remain in stasis. Gawaine took in the tears and was meant to use the combined power to destroy the Ix. David's theory is she would have opened herself up for illumination, attracting all the Ix with the power of 12 fire tears, and then sacrificed herself to the Fire Eternal, destroying all the Ix, but also all the dragons along with herself. They don't know what went wrong, but David thinks the Ix found out about the plan and commingled with humans en masse, and Gawaine was not able to sacrifice all the innocent humans to destroy the Ix. In Scuffenbury, the innkeeper Hannah and her husband Clive have dug tunnels into the Tor and recently reached the dragon. She tells Tam and Lucy that it is the moon which must align with the cairn (unicorns are associated with the moon) and that the song of a red-haired maiden can wake the dragon. She takes them through the tunnels and the dragon starts to wake. Chaos ensues as Ms Gee shows up, Tam is buried in a tunnel collapse, and Lucy, Gwendolen, and Bella barely escape the tunnels. David sends the young dragon Grockle to protect them and he flies them to the Tor, where Lucy puts in a vial of her tears Ms Gee had extracted with a spell. It acts like a mirror and focuses the moonlight on Teramelle's horn, waking her. She shoots a beam of moonlight into the Tor and Gawaine rises. Lucy has been writing a journal explaining her family's history with dragons, starting with the story of Guinevere and Gawain and how Guinevere's descendants (including Lucy and her mom Liz) are actually quickened from eggs rather than born. She also writes about the polar bears. David has Gwendolen translate the journal to dragontongue and encourages Lucy to post it online because she and Liz are not the only descendants of Guinevere. Lucy is getting a lot of e-mail responses but Zanna does not want to read them invading her privacy. When she hears David say Ms Gee's cat is actually a girl named Bella, she opens one e-mail, sent by Bella before Ms Gee got her. The e-mail says Gawaine gave two eggs before going into stasis, one to the eagle Gideon and one to the unicorn's red-haired companion, but a sybil dressed as the redhead stole the egg, poisoned Gawaine's eye, and broke the egg in front of her. David rushes off, knowing the dragon will attack Lucy thinking she destroyed the egg. Just after he calms Gawaine, who realizes Lucy is her descendant when her flames do not affect Lucy, the Ix show up. David gives Lucy the narwhal tusk and she tries to teleport home, but it only takes her across to the Tor. It is actually Gwillan instead of Groyne. David fuses with Grockle to become an illuminated dragon called G'lant. He and Gawaine fight the Ix. The last darkling-raven drinks Lucy's tears from the cairn, becomes a true darkling, and beings replicating. One is about to kill Bella when a hand reaches up through the ground and turns it to ice; Tam emerges and says bears are good at surviving in dens. Zanna realizes Gwillan is gone and leaves to warn David and the others at Scuffenbury. Before she does she sends a message to Agatha to come look after Liz, but Gwilanna intercepts the message and comes disguised as Agatha. Zanna arrives at Scuffenbury and is scanned by Teramelle, who says "We are one" sounding a lot like Alexa. Up close, Zanna can see that the unicorn horn is one smooth tusk like a narwhal's, but appears spiraled because of an etching spiraling up its length; the mark of Oomara over and over. Teramelle says they must hurry if they are going to help Gawaine, because the Great Fire is coming; Zanna realizes the unicorn is there because the convergence of ley lines is on the site of a conduit to the earth's core and the Fire Eternal. Gwilanna places Gawain's isocele over Liz to draw out the dark fire; the isocele turns black but she is unable to cast a containment spell. A shadowy inversion of Gawain appears, "with all the power of a dragon and many times the evil of a darkling" and Gwilanna dies. The shadow transports itself to Scuffenbury while dragons appear to Alexa and she uses her new wings to fly with them to Scuffenbury as well. A darkling has turned its attention to Gwillan, who captured it between oversize paws like a wishing dragon's and turned it into a black dragon. David tells Gwillan to look to the light, and a column of pearlescent light is standing between the moon and the top of the hill. Alexa and the dragons fly up, and the hill opens into a caldera with the Fire Eternal, the great creative force. Gwillan/Joseph Henry is filled with joy, and embraces the dragon he created, making it pure. When Gwillan appeared, more of the Ix had clustered to the last darkling and were about to overtake G'lant, when Gawaine leapt up and swallowed it whole, plunging into the Fire Eternal before they could escape, fulfilling the mission her Wearle had given her long ago and avenging her sons. Teramelle however rushed toward the Fire Eternal as well, Zanna noticing a change in her eyes. Suddenly, the Fire Eternal had been inverted into a dark force "that could fold both space and time." In a flash it disintegrates two of the dragons into dark matter, and comes toward Gwillan but is suddenly snapped sideways. Alexa is holding Gadzooks, and the dark fire is redirected through is pencil. Everyone disappears, and Gadzooks has written "Sometimes."Category:Books (real-world)